resources and progressed nowhere. Others battled to protect the designer’s
turf, only to find that management consultants and other business profes-
sionals had co-opted design principles for themselves, combined them with
twenty-first-century management strategies, and are using them to win the
war. In the second part of this book, best-practice examples show designers
how to be more strategic in their methods, using information technology,
financial management, marketing and human resources skills, and team
dynamics to power the practice of interior design.
WHERE IS THE HEART OF IT?
The heart of this book is interior design itself. In Part Three, the authors show
strategy in action, presenting works that have become benchmarks of interior
design for the ways in which they address design strategy and research,
sustainability, and global and specialty practices. This part also describes the
legal environment and legislation that affect interior designers in the United
States. Following the dictum that power isn’t something that’s conferred, it’s
something that’s taken, American designers who choose to become involved
in legislative affairs will grant themselves the power to affect the profession of
interior design for decades to come.
Part Four focuses on the designer’s scope of services. Narratives from a var-
ied group of designers describe their individual methods of approaching the
process of design. These descriptions address prelease services, position-
ing and programming, schematic design, design development, and contract
documentation and administration. Part Five focuses on the management
process and delineates the criteria for a successful design project, showing
designers effective ways to manage relationships with the in-house design
team, consultants, and clients.
WHAT IS AT RISK?
During the French Revolution executions were popular public affairs, and all
of Paris was agog over the mind-numbing, heart-stopping efficiency of a new
and improved model of the guillotine, a beheading device that consisted of
two 14-foot posts from which an 88-pound diagonal metal blade, when its
support mechanism was released by the executioner, dropped at the rate of
21 feet per second.
From the aristocrats’ point of view, one of the heroes of the Revolution was
the Scarlet Pimpernel, who formed a secret society dedicated to rescuing
their class from the guillotine.INTERIOR DESIGN HANDBOOK OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE XIV